Stanley Russell tried not to stare too much out the viewport that showed him nothing but black space and distant, bright stars. He wondered which one was orbited by Hrwang. He tried to pay attention to the proceedings that occurred in the command center of the Lord Admiral’s spaceship, the largest room on board and where a trial of some sort occurred now, but it was difficult. He couldn’t follow the arguments and had to confess to himself that he should have spent more time learning Est, the Lord Admiral’s language.
At least Hrwang meetings at Hearst Castle were held in English. Here, Stanley felt helpless. An imbecile.
He recognized the Est word for ‘Ambassador’ and heard, or at least thought he heard, it used several times. But he knew he wasn’t on trial. Someone called the Admiral Commander was, although he was now called Prisoner Zero Six One Six, but Stanley didn’t know why.
He wished again he’d spent more time learning the language.
The trial droned on, the Lord Admiral occasionally getting into titanic arguments with one of his senior officers, and neither man looked happy. The prisoner didn’t seem to care.
Eventually it ended, or at least they took a break, and the Lord Admiral encouraged Stanley to find a restroom and then afterward a galley to get something to eat. Stanley was surprised to be allowed to leave the room by himself.
He floated down a corridor, reaccustoming himself to the sensation of zero gee, and remembered his first visit aboard the Lord Admiral’s ship. It made him think of Irina. They’d hated each other, but he still didn’t understand why she’d tried to kill him. Her loss was senseless.
He also wondered what had happened to the so-called President, the one who’d said she had been an Under Secretary for Space before the war. She obviously wasn’t up here, like she wanted to be. Maybe the rocket hadn’t worked. She’d said it was experimental.
Nothing looked like a restroom.
The Hrwang didn’t use universal symbols for things like restrooms, like humans did. You either read Est and could find your way, or you didn’t. What did Hrwang who spoke other languages do? he thought to himself. Probably not come aboard the command ship, he answered.
He turned down random corridors and eventually saw some windows with bright lights shining through them. He floated up to them, staring out.
It was a hangar bay of sorts, several Hrwang combat craft sitting in it. One arrived, damage on it, part of the hull blackened, and one of the others simply winked out of existence. That was still disconcerting.
The damaged craft landed, the bay doors closed, and a hatch cycled open. Several men exited, then turned, helping others out, helping men who were bandaged. They carried two others out on stretchers.
Apparently the war wasn’t over after all.
Stanley finally found a crewman who showed him a restroom, then led him to a galley. The food served was more heavily spiced than what he was accustomed to. It must have been actual Hrwang food, freeze dried and shipped with the fleet from their home world, not Earth food spiced with Hrwang spices.
Would eating it hurt him in any way?
He forced himself to eat a little anyway.
The afternoon proceedings continued much the same as the morning one had, although the Lord Admiral and the Fleet Admiral almost came to blows two hours into them. Stanley might not have been able to understand the language the men spoke, but that wasn’t necessary. They were clearly at odds.
The accused, the former Admiral Commander, Prisoner something or another, Stanley couldn’t remember his number now, still didn’t seem to care. He watched everything impassively as if none of it had anything to do with him, as impartial an observer as Stanley. Stanley even caught him nodding off at one point.
Stanley wanted to ask the Lord Admiral several questions, but didn’t dare approach the Hrwang leader during a short break in the proceedings. The man’s eyeballs bulged and his face turned red during his last argument. The Fleet Admiral didn’t budge from whatever position he held.
Eventually the Lord Admiral stormed out, and Stanley gathered they were done for the day. A Hrwang officer approached Stanley and spoke to him in English.
“Ambassador, will you follow me?”
“Where to?”
“I am a doctor who operated on your body. I will conduct an examination.”
“Okay,” Stanley half agreed. The doctor headed for a different exit than the one the Lord Admiral had used and Stanley followed, more curious than concerned.
They floated back the same way Stanley had gone at lunch time, but at a junction the doctor took a different corridor down and escorted Stanley onto the hangar deck. A black Hrwang combat craft waited there, it’s hatch cycling open as they approached.
“Where are we going?” Stanley asked, stopping.
“I have...” The doctor pulled out his tablet and scrolled on it momentarily. “I have authorizations to take you to Fourth Transport of the Fleet of the People. The spacecraft where you were operated.”
“I was on this ship the last time I was here. When I got shot.” Wasn’t he? Stanley couldn’t be sure now.
“You rested on this ship. I operated on your body on the ship where I work.”
“I operated on you,” Stanley corrected. “Doctors don’t say they operated on a body. They operate on a person. Someone. Me. Say, ‘When I operated on you’.”
“I apologize. I operated on you on the ship where I work.”
The doctor waved for Stanley to enter the hatch. Stanley couldn’t get over the feeling he was being kidnapped.
“Does the Lord Admiral know that I’m going over to your ship?”
“Of course. He gave me authorizations.”
“It’s not plural. Just ‘authorization’.”
“I apologize. This is my first time talking English with one of your people.”
“Seriously?” Stanley asked, surprised. “You speak pretty well for a first timer.”
“I will explain.” The doctor held his hand up again for Stanley to enter the hatch. Stanley thought for a second that the man could be lying about having authorization to take him somewhere, but he decided the guy couldn’t be too bad. He was a doctor, not real military like the others.
Stanley entered the combat craft.
After the hatch sealed, two pilots ran through a checklist, entered some navigational instructions, and the hangar disappeared from around them, empty space taking its place. The ship floated in front of one of the large transport vessels. Hangar doors opened up.
The doctor was explaining how he had trained in English for years in preparation for this mission, knowing that any number of doctors could be selected, but if he spoke English or Spanish he would have a better chance.
“English or Spanish?” Stanley asked, trying to watch the combat craft maneuver into the hangar.
“The two dominant languages on the broadcasts we studied. I only remember one word from Spanish, though.” The doctor puckered up his lips. “GOOOOOOAAAAAALLL,” he yelled.
Stanley turned away from the oncoming spaceship and stared in shock at the doctor. Even one of the pilots turned his head around, trying to figure out what was going on.
“What was that?” Stanley asked.
“It comes from Spanish broadcasts. Men playing a kicking ball game. When one man kicks the ball past a man wearing a different color, the Spanish man yelled that. It’s the only word I remember in that language.” He sat back smugly.
“Okay.” Stanley had no idea what the doctor was talking about. He changed the subject. “Why don’t we just beam over to the other ship, or something?”
“Beam?”
“These ships jump wherever they want. Why not just jump onto the other hangar deck? Why did we go out into space first?”
“The AIs, that’s right isn’t it? AI?”
“Artificial Intelligence? Y
es, we say AI.”
“The AIs have rules about traveling. Going into another ship violates their rule.”
“How intelligent are they?” Stanley asked.
The doctor shrugged, a very human-like motion. Some things were so common between them that Stanley often forgot how alien the Hrwang could be. They looked human, acted human, claimed to be human, but something fundamental had to be different. Stanley didn’t believe a god somewhere planted seeds all over the Universe. The randomness of evolution dictated that intelligent life should be just as varied as life itself.
“You’ll have to ask a physician. I’m a doctor,” the doctor replied to Stanley’s question.
Stanley laughed.
“A physician is a doctor. I think you meant physicist,” he said.
“I apologize,” the doctor said. “I’ll make the correction.” He pulled his tablet out and made some entries. “Say those words again,” he said, holding the tablet up to Stanley.
Stanley felt like he was revealing state secrets or something. But he wanted to exchange information with the Hrwang. This was as good an exchange as any.
“A physician and a doctor are the same thing. A physicist is someone who studies physics. A physician studies medicine,” he explained into the tablet.
“Thank you,” the doctor said, and the craft set down heavily on the deck. “This ship is much larger than First Command,” he explained. Command First Class of the Fleet of the People was the name of the Lord Admiral’s command ship, but Stanley had been told it was often shortened to First Command.
“Let’s go see how big it is,” Stanley said, heading for the hatch once the pilots cycled it open.
“Your examination first,” the doctor reminded.
As Stanley lay uncomfortably on a table, the top of his jumpsuit unzipped and pulled down around his stomach, the alien doctor poking him with devices and sampling his blood and the scar tissue that had formed around the spot where Irina shot him, he remembered scenes from countless movies about alien abductions and examinations.
His thoughts only made the experience more uncomfortable.
“So, are you like Second Under Doctor Medicine, or something like that?”
“First Doctor Combat Medic,” the doctor replied, turning away to drag over some type of imaging device.
“Combat Medic?”
“Performing medical procedures for individuals injured in combat. Is that not Combat Medic?”
“Sort of,” Stanley said. The doctor placed the imaging device over his shoulder and it hummed. Stanley felt a prickly sensation. “Humans would probably say ‘Medical Corps’ or something like that.”
“Then I will have it changed immediately. I am now designated First Doctor Medical Corps. Thank you.”
“Sure. You know, you probably should find some English professors or something to help you with your translations.”
“Do you think one would?”
“I’m sure you could find someone somewhere.”
“Brilliant idea, Ambassador.” He pulled the device away. “You may dress now. Would you like to join me for dinner?”
“How’s my shoulder?”
“Right as a fiddle,” the doctor replied, smiling, pleased with the idiom he used. Stanley didn’t bother correcting him.
Dinner on Fourth Transport was better than lunch on the command ship had been. The food had clearly been brought up from Earth, and the cooks experimented with local recipes. They served baked potatoes with sour cream and honey on the side, raw carrots, a fruit cereal with milk, and sliced apples. Stanley left the honey off his potato.
“Someone getting creative?” he asked, taking his food out of its zero gee containers carefully. He’d remembered how he’d made a fool of himself his first zero gee meal.
The conversation turned to how the Hrwang had learned English from drones returning with over a million hours of audio and video broadcasts. Linguistic experts had pieced together the languages, and many began studying them immediately. Hrwang leaders were astounded that Earth still used thousands of languages. The Hrwang had several hundred languages in current usage, but the majority of the planet spoke only three.
“Est, Malakshian, and Drobnin. The rest of our languages are spoken by few people. Tribes. Families. Scholars. Although a thousand years ago, there were many more, like your world. No one speaks them now.”
“We have thousands of extinct languages also.”
“It is hard to work together when one cannot share words,” the doctor said.
“I’m impressed with how well you’ve learned English.”
“I told you I studied several years. The sleep conditioning helped. Would you like me to show you the sleep chambers? The ones we used on our way to your planet?”
“Of course,” Stanley said, jumping at the chance. He couldn’t finish his dinner quickly enough and impatiently waited for the doctor to finish his.
“I didn’t like the white cream mixed with the golden liquid,” the doctor said after he finally stopped eating.
“We would never mix those two,” Stanley said and made a face.
“I will tell the cook.”
“Can we see the sleep chambers first?”
“Of course,” the doctor replied, imitating Stanley’s earlier answer.
Fourth Transport’s simplicity of design impressed Stanley. A long tube, waking rooms all around in a ring, sleeping pods behind them containing three hundred and sixty cold sleep beds, eight pods in each ring, eight rings total. Twenty-three thousand and forty people per transport, if Stanley could still do math.
“How many of these ships are there?” he asked casually, inspecting the waking stations.
“Thirteen transports. Twenty-four spaceships total, including some containing only cargo. But even they have sleep beds for their crew.”
“Coming to Earth was a massive undertaking,” Stanley commented.
“Initial engagement with another world always is.”
“Why did we attack you?” Stanley asked. Any world capable of mounting such a mission should not be simply attacked. It didn’t make sense.
“Have you not seen the video we intercepted?” the doctor replied. “It’s why Prisoner Zero Six One Six is on trial.”
The copy the doctor had of the video could only be described as bootleg. Stanley watched it, amazed, then watched it again, helping the doctor to understand the English. After the second viewing, even the doctor seemed taken aback.
“I still don’t really understand,” he said.
“I don’t either,” Stanley replied, not knowing if he sat across from a friend or a foe.
“The Lord Admiral of the Fleet of the People has told all of us that we must do everything we can to help you rebuild your world. After seeing this through your understanding, I promise you I will spend my life helping you.” The man looked so earnestly at Stanley that Stanley almost wanted to hug him. Definitely friend.
“Thank you,” Stanley whispered.
The ride back to First Command was subdued. Stanley had more questions about the procedures for putting people into cold sleep and waking them up, but those questions would have to wait. The doctor simply stared ahead, like wheels spun in his mind. Stanley was grateful to have him as an ally. A doctor had to be smarter than a soldier, even if the soldier was an admiral.
The second day of the trial of Prisoner Zero Six One Six proceeded more smoothly. The Fleet Admiral sat curiously subdued in a corner of the room, not challenging the Lord Admiral once. Stanley wondered what happened behind closed doors the previous night. Things eventually got so slow, he found himself nodding off.
The trial ended with some sort of a vote and a pronouncement by a soldier. To Stanley’s surprise, both the Fleet Admiral and the prisoner were led away by guards. No one else looked surprised. The Lord Admira
l came over to Stanley’s side, a smile on his face.
“Do you have questions, Ambassador?” the Hrwang leader asked.
“What just happened?”
“Can I explain over dinner? I’m terribly hungry.”
Dinner with the Lord Admiral was the usual, wretched, spicy Hrwang food. Stanley didn’t eat much. He couldn’t wait to get back to Earth to eat real food. Even the crazy concoction he’d been served on the doctor’s ship had been better than the food here.
Once he’d eaten enough, the Lord Admiral began explaining.
“Based on the evidence of a video broadcast we intercepted, Prisoner Zero Six One Six has been found guilty of exceeding his command authority in the defense of the Fleet of the People and has been stripped of rank and exiled from Hrwang. He will receive a new designation and return with me to the planet. I assume you will accompany us back also.”
“When?”
“Soon. I have work I need to do for a few days, but I’m ready for a warm bed. Aren’t you?”
Stanley knew a pretty blonde waited for the Lord Admiral in his bed. Men of power certainly had their way with things, he thought. That thought made him think of Sherry and he felt a pang of loss for the quiet atmospheric chemist. It was hard to believe he was the only surviving member of Beagle’s crew.
“What happened to the Fleet Admiral?” Stanley asked.
“He no longer holds that designation. He was found guilty in a separate trial of subversion of the Fleet of the People. He has been sentenced to death. Although he will still die as an Admiral. I fought for the man’s dignity.”
“When was that trial?”
“Last night. While you were with the First Doctor.”
“What did he do?”
“Details don’t matter.”
“Oh.” Stanley picked at a cube of meat soaked in something yellowish with green flecks. He picked away the flecks with a tine of his fork. He knew they were especially hot.
“Are all trials this quick on Hrwang?” he asked. He’d only met the Fleet Admiral once during his recovery, but he liked the man. Although commander of a large fleet, he’d taken time to visit and made Stanley feel important. A death sentence for such a high ranking officer struck Stanley as over the top. “What did he do to deserve his punishment?” he added.
“Trust our procedures,” the Lord Admiral replied. “We say on our planet that swift justice serves the people. The people were served today. The Admiral must be executed.”
Stanley picked at his food. He found courage to complain.
“He’s a good man. A death sentence is harsh, Lord Admiral.”
“If you knew what he did, you would agree with me, Ambassador. Loyalty above all.”
“Can you not tell me something about what he’s guilty of, Lord Admiral?” Stanley knew to refer to the man’s rank when pressing him with questions. Although a great man, he knew the Lord Admiral had an ego. Like all great men, Stanley supposed. One does not become a Lord Admiral without a healthy dose of self-confidence.
“His trial was held separately to keep the proceedings secret. If it were revealed what he had done, it would be damaging to the Fleet of the People. Not even others among my staff can know. Now, are you finished eating? We have things to discuss.”
Stanley shrugged. He didn’t want any more food. The video he’d watched with the doctor, the death sentence of the Hrwang Fleet Admiral, a seemingly good man, and the simple exile of Prisoner Zero Six One Six, the former Admiral Commander, were incongruous. Hadn’t what the Admiral Commander done been more worthy of an execution, if Stanley supported such things?
Could he say something to the Lord Admiral without getting the First Doctor in trouble for showing him the bootleg video? He didn’t want the man who had operated on him to be punished.
What had the Fleet Admiral done? What was going on? Stanley felt nothing but confusion and simply nodded in reply to the Lord Admiral’s question.
“Then let’s go, Ambassador,” the Lord Admiral said.
Stanley quietly followed him out of the galley.
The former Fleet Admiral, now designated merely Admiral, pondered his fate in the cell where he’d formerly placed Prisoner Zero Six One Six. The Lord Admiral had made his point. The former Fleet Admiral had been rash in ordering the arrests of the former Admiral Commander and the Lord Admiral’s Adjutant. The Adjutant had escaped to Earth, but the Admiral suspected his trial would have gone swimmingly for him. The Adjutant need not have feared anything and need not have wasted an escape craft. Prisoner Zero Six One Six had certainly received a light punishment.
His own punishment weighed on him now.
The charges of which he’d been accused were outlandish and yet he couldn’t defend himself against them.
They were all true.
The Lord Admiral’s Adjutant must have been spying on him.
Most of what he’d been charged with were day to day actions that any commander needed to take. Twisting them into accusations of malfeasance, subversion, and treachery had been a masterful stroke by the Lord Admiral. Peppered with the actions he’d taken against the Admiral Commander and the Adjutant, the Lord Admiral had painted a picture of him as an officer preparing to launch a coup. The two other officers sitting in on the trial, a Grenadier major and a colonel from Third Assault, agreed readily with their supreme commander.
The Admiral wondered what punishment would have awaited them had they not.
He recognized he had grossly underestimated the Lord Admiral. He had felt he could operate as a flag officer independently, could take actions and do things without having to report every little thing to his superior.
He had also thought, after seeing the intercepted broadcast video, that he was doing the right thing in arresting the Admiral Commander. He knew now he should have traveled down to the planet and conferred with the Lord Admiral first, who probably would have told him to ignore the broadcast as falsified, doctored by a people who had shown an incredible propensity for depicting fiction in video.
Hrwang fiction wasn’t nearly as realistic.
He would still be alive in the morning if he had done so. He understood that.
Officers rarely received death sentences. Hardly anyone received death sentences and those only in times of war. The Admiral had tried to stand up to his commander at one point during his own sentencing, pointing out to the Lord Admiral that he, himself, had declared the war with the residents of the planet below over, and thus a death sentence would not be appropriate.
The Lord Admiral immediately launched into a recitation of casualty statistics to make his point. The war was far from over.
With the two other officers agreeing, the Admiral had no choice but to accept his fate.
He worried a little about his family. When the shame of his conviction and punishment reached them, they would have to distance themselves or lose all of their property. They would take a different family name and perhaps even sell their homes and land and move to another part of Est, or even to a different country. It was too bad. His wife had a beautiful view out her bedroom window.
He looked down at the tiny, oblong, brown pill he rolled in his fingers. No one had actually, legally, been flayed alive in centuries, but the threat of it was sufficiently severe that everyone took the offered pill. Stories of executions, people surviving for hours in excruciating pain, were enough to convince even the most defiant to take the pill and lay down on their bunks and quietly go to sleep.
The Admiral knew he would do the same. He also knew that if the Lord Admiral knew what he really had been guilty of, his superior would have snatched the pill away and ordered the flaying. He smiled, enjoying a little victory before he placed the agent of death into his mouth.
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